AUGUST 29, 2006

And let us not forget Champ Car

The Champ Car race in Montreal on Sunday was postponed because of bad weather after just six laps and as a result was run on Monday morning. France's Sebastien Bourdais raced to an easy victory - his sixth of the year - and knocked a big hole in the ambitions of his rival challengers. With three races to go Bourdais leads the title race by 62 points and it looks as though a third conescutive Vanderbilt Cup is very much on the cards.

Bourdais's rival AJ Allmendinger took the lead at the start and was ahead for seven laps but then headed for the pits with a broken halfshaft. Bourdais took over and despite a number of caution periods which saw Justin Wilson lead.

Wilson's hopes of success ran into big trouble when he was about the come into the pits and Oriol Servia crashed heavily. That meant that Wilson had to enter the pits when they were closed rather than risk running out of fuel on the circuit. This meant he was given a penalty which dropped him to the tail of the field. Wilson fought back but he ended up crashing into a wall. The resulting caution gave Antonio Pizzonia the chance to lead before he too pitted and left Nelson Philippe in front although he too eventually had to pit. That put Bourdais back into the lead and he did not let it go, despite a late-race caution which closed up his challengers. Paul Tracy was second with Philippe third and Dan Clarke fourth ahead of Will Power and Nicky Pastorelli. The race was attended by only around 20,000 fans because of the delays but the overall sales for the weekend were reported to be slightly up although there remain rumours suggesting that Champ Car will not return in the future.